Cynics may say it is convenient timing given the financial and economics crisis…

Notice the get out clause though:

“All recommendations were helpful in helping the UAE form its own assessment of our objectives and goals,” said Lana Nusseibeh, the director of research and communications at the Ministry of State for FNV [Federal National Council] Affairs and a member of the UAE delegation.

“Some were less helpful in being outside our framework, norms and religious values.” [my emphasis]

When I spoke to a fellow Emirati columnist about the West’s Dubai bashing syndrome he told me: “It’s natural, they’re jealous.” He may be right. Stagnant economies (we’re still predicted to grow at 4.25 per cent in 2009 despite the economic crisis), ageing populations, weakening social welfare and scant natural resources aren’t really as exciting as reading about Princess Diana.

A bit of a cheap shot for an article trying to take the high road. (Things don’t look too rosy in Dubai either.)

Dubai (and the UAE in general) will have to appreciate the fact that their attempts to court the world’s attention to their plush hotels, luxury apartments, and economic free zones will include greater scrutiny (fair and unfair) of things it doesn’t wish to advertise so openly.

Dubai, home of the Middle East’s largest-container port within the Gulf, is the latest Arab sheikdom to study projects to bypass the Hormuz shipping lane that’s vulnerable to Iranian attack.

According to a senior Dubai government official, planners have proposed building a giant canal across the desert that could handle the huge oil tankers and freight ships that currently sail through Hormuz.

Why not?

Carole Cadwalladr’s attempt is a bit lightweight.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in the Grauniad does better (see accompanying series of photos), including the shocking revelation that non-white people can be racist and hold supremacist notions:

Down at the base of the pyramid are the labourers, waiters, hotel employees and unskilled workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines and beyond. They move deferentially around the huge malls, cafes, bars and restaurants, bowing down and calling people sir and madam. In the middle of the day, during the hottest hours, you can see them sleeping in public gardens under trees, or on the marble floors of the Dubai Mosque, on benches or pieces of cardboard on side streets. These are the victims of the racism that is not only flourishing in the UAE but is increasingly being exported to the rest of the Middle East. Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.

One evening in Abu Dhabi, I have dinner with my friend Ali, a charming Iraqi engineer whom I have known for two decades. After the meal, as his wife serves saffron-flavoured tea, he pushes back his chair and lights a cigar. We talk about stock markets, investment and the Middle East, and then the issue of race comes up.

“We will never use the new metro if it’s not segregated,” he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighbouring Dubai. “We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell,” his wife explains.

Not for the first time, I am told that while the immigrant workers are living in appalling conditions, they would be even worse off back home - as if poverty in one place can justify exploitation in the other.

“We need slaves,” my friend says. “We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids - they were slaves.”